Dementia Statistics

Demographic changes to dementia

Very interested to note a number of press reports on Dementia over the last couple of days.

The Conservatives in Medway are claiming that demographic pressures are downward and that a reduction in numbers are causing services to be un-used.

Of course this is not accurate with an increasing requirement in future years which is why closing and privatising centres on the back of downward pressures on 'Council' statistics is baseless and actually concerning.

Incidentally we saw the same Tory-trick on statistics to close Primary Schools which led the School's Adjudicator over-turning the administrations judgement.

We all know the Medway Conservatives changed the eligibility criteria in 2008 making those previously eligible to use Nelson Court, Robert Bean, Platters Farm and Balfour inelgibile. We all know that they have already budgeted for care home closures before the consultation had even started in an arrogant act of subverting the consultation exercise itself.

Councillor Jarrett is now taking the lead after the Portfolio holder, David Brake, made quite inaccurate remarks to Cabinet on redundancies only a few weeks ago.

In his piece to the Messenger:

"The Balfour Centre provides day care, but since the introduction of personalized budgets by the last Labour government there is more choice available. Now increasing numbers of people are taking the payments to which they are entitled and using to buy a host of different services"

No one opposes the move towards 'personalised budgets' for those who are capable of managing their own budgets. However, in cases of hightened dementia individuals are unable to manage personal budgets and therefore the Council does take responsibility.

In addition, Councillor Jarrett has deliberely ignored the fact his administration fiddled the eligibility criteria in 2008. Once again paiting a woefully inaccurate position of the reasons why numbers are being reduced. Incidentally the centre being proposed for closure is at 70-80% of capacity which favours well with other private-sector providers; so that argument is also utterly without logic.

"All provide a good standard of care, but at more than twice the cost to be found in other parts of the care homes market in Medway they no longer represent good value for money"

Taking into account that Jarrett has mis-spent on countless capital programmes and on revenue budgets to the tune of £7.9m; the man has lost grip of the Council spending talking about value for money has to make you cry.

This is a false argument because the centres being closed & privatised deal with very specialist cases and can not be 'averaged' out across other care homes who may have individuals with little help or need. In addition, the option to create a social partnership with other local authorities could reduce costs by creating back office synergies - this option has been totally ignored by the Conservatives who favour a wholly private sector option - which indicently for high-need dementia care could be as expensive in some cases.

"Medway will not be closing any of the three homes"

The fact is he can not guarantee that once these homes transfer to private ownership that they will not close; as we saw with Shaw's Wood in Strood, the Tories make grand statements only to be found inaccurate twelve months later.

Time and time again the Tories paint a dishonest picture of the truth.

Financial times are tight but as a Society is simply a case of basic moral right that we care for our most vulnerable in the best way possible.

If we cut the stupid expenditures on Tory pet-programmes we would not be in such a difficult spot and that is the fault of the Cameron Conservatives; who are self-evidently not compassionate